The PREMIER LEAGUE is an English professional league for men's
association football clubs. At the top of the English football league
system , it is the country's primary football competition. Contested
by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with
the
English Football League (EFL; known as "The Football League"
before 2016–17). Welsh clubs that compete in the English football
league system can also qualify.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League is a corporation in which the 20 member clubs act
as shareholders. Seasons run from August to May. Teams play 38 matches
each (playing each team in the league twice, home and away), totalling
380 matches in the season. Most games are played on Saturday and
Sunday afternoons; others during weekday evenings. It is colloquially
known as the PREMIERSHIP and outside the UK it is commonly referred to
as the ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE (EPL).

The competition formed as the FA PREMIER LEAGUE on 20 February 1992
following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division
to break away from the Football League, which was founded in 1888, and
take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal. The deal was
worth £1 billion a year domestically as of 2013–14, with
BSkyB and
BT GroupBT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 116 and 38 games
respectively. The league generates €2.2 billion per year in
domestic and international television rights. In 2014-15, teams were
apportioned revenues of £1,600 million, rising sharply to £2,400
million in 2016-17.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League is the most-watched sports league in the world,
broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV
audience of 4.7 billion people. In the 2014–15 season , the average
Premier LeaguePremier League match attendance exceeded 36,000, second highest of
any professional football league behind the
BundesligaBundesliga 's 43,500.
Most stadium occupancies are near capacity. The
Premier LeaguePremier League ranks
third in the
UEFAUEFA coefficients of leagues based on performances in
European competitions over the past five seasons.

While 47 clubs have competed since the inception of the Premier
League in 1992, only six have won the title:
Manchester United (13),
Chelsea (5), Arsenal (3), Manchester City (2), Blackburn Rovers (1)
and Leicester City (1). The current champions are Chelsea, who secured
the 2016–17 title in early May 2017.

Despite significant European success in the 1970s and early 1980s,
the late '80s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were
crumbling, supporters endured poor facilities, hooliganism was rife,
and English clubs were banned from European competition for five years
following the Heysel
StadiumStadium disaster in 1985. The Football League
First Division , the top level of English football since 1888, was
behind leagues such as Italy's
Serie A and Spain's
La Liga in
attendances and revenues, and several top English players had moved
abroad.

The 1980s also saw the major English clubs, led by the likes of
Martin Edwards of Manchester United,
Irving Scholar of Tottenham
Hotspur and
David Dein of Arsenal, beginning to be transformed into
business ventures that apply commercial principles to the running of
the clubs, which led to the increasing power of the elite clubs. By
threatening to break away, the top clubs from Division One managed to
increase their voting power, and took 50% share all television and
sponsorship income in 1986. Revenue from television also became more
important: the Football League received £6.3 million for a two-year
agreement in 1986, but by 1988, in a deal agreed with ITV, the price
rose to £44 million over four years with the leading clubs taking 75%
of the cash. The 1988 negotiations was conducted under the threat of
ten clubs leaving to form a "super league", but were eventually
persuaded to stay with the top clubs taking the lion share of the
deal. As stadiums improved and match attendance and revenues rose,
the country's top teams again considered leaving the Football League
in order to capitalise on the influx of money into the sport.

At the close of the 1991 season, a proposal was tabled for the
establishment of a new league that would bring more money into the
game overall. The Founder Members Agreement, signed on 17 July 1991 by
the game's top-flight clubs, established the basic principles for
setting up the FA Premier League. The newly formed top division would
have commercial independence from
The Football AssociationThe Football Association and the
Football League, giving the FA
Premier LeaguePremier League licence to negotiate its
own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The argument given at the
time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete
with teams across Europe.

The managing director of
London Weekend Television (LWT),
Greg DykeGreg Dyke ,
met with the representatives of the "big five" football clubs in
EnglandEngland in 1990. The meeting was to pave the way for a break away from
The Football League . Dyke believed that it would be more lucrative
for LWT if only the larger clubs in the country were featured on
national television and wanted to establish whether the clubs would be
interested in a larger share of television rights money. The five
clubs decided it was a good idea and decided to press ahead with it;
however, the league would have no credibility without the backing of
The Football AssociationThe Football Association and so
David Dein of Arsenal held talks to
see whether the FA were receptive to the idea. The FA did not enjoy an
amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and
considered it as a way to weaken the Football League's position.

In 1992, the First Division clubs resigned from the Football League
en masse and on 27 May 1992 the FA
Premier LeaguePremier League was formed as a
limited company working out of an office at the Football Association's
then headquarters in
Lancaster Gate . This meant a break-up of the
104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four
divisions; the
Premier LeaguePremier League would operate with a single division and
the Football League with three. There was no change in competition
format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and
promotion and relegation between the
Premier LeaguePremier League and the new First
Division remained the same as the old First and Second Divisions with
three teams relegated from the league and three promoted.

The league held its first season in 1992–93 . It was composed of 22
clubs for that session. The first
Premier LeaguePremier League goal was scored by
Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2–1 win against Manchester
United. The 22 inaugural members of the new
Premier LeaguePremier League were
Arsenal , Aston Villa , Blackburn Rovers , Chelsea , Coventry City ,
Crystal Palace , Everton , Ipswich Town , Leeds United , Liverpool ,
Manchester City ,
Manchester United , Middlesbrough , Norwich City ,
Nottingham Forest , Oldham Athletic , Queens Park Rangers , Sheffield
United , Sheffield Wednesday , Southampton , Tottenham Hotspur , and
Wimbledon . Luton Town , Notts County and West Ham United were the
three teams relegated from the old first division at the end of the
1991–92 season, and did not take part in the inaugural Premier
League season.

"BIG FOUR" DOMINANCE (2000S)

Results of the 'Big Four' during the 2000s
SEASON
ARSENAL
CHELSEA
LIVERPOOL
Man.
United

1999–2000
2
5
4
1

2000–01
2
6
3
1

2001–02
1
6
2
3

2002–03
2
4
5
1

2003–04
1
2
4
3

2004–05
2
1
5
3

2005–06
4
1
3
2

2006–07
4
2
3
1

2007–08
3
2
4
1

2008–09
4
3
2
1

2009–10
3
1
7
2

Top four
finishes 11
8
8
11

out of 11

One significant feature of the
Premier LeaguePremier League in the mid-2000s was
the dominance of the so-called "Big Four" clubs: Arsenal , Chelsea ,
Liverpool and
Manchester United . During this decade, they dominated
the top four spots, which came with
UEFAUEFA Champions League
qualification, taking all top four places in 5 out of 6 seasons from
2003–04 to 2008–09 inclusive. Arsenal went as far as winning the
league without losing a single game in 2003–04, the only time it has
ever happened in the Premier League. In May 2008
Kevin Keegan stated
that "Big Four" dominance threatened the division, "This league is in
danger of becoming one of the most boring but great leagues in the
world."
Premier LeaguePremier League chief executive
Richard Scudamore said in
defence: "There are a lot of different tussles that go on in the
Premier LeaguePremier League depending on whether you're at the top, in the middle
or at the bottom that make it interesting."

The years following 2009 marked a shift in the structure of the "Big
Four" with Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City both breaking into
the top four. In the 2009–10 season , Tottenham finished fourth and
became the first team to break the top four since Everton in 2005.
Criticism of the gap between an elite group of "super clubs" and the
majority of the
Premier LeaguePremier League has continued, nevertheless, due to
their increasing ability to spend more than the other Premier League
clubs. Manchester City won the title in the 2011–12 season ,
becoming the first club outside the "Big Four" to win since 1994–95
. That season also saw two of the Big Four (Chelsea and Liverpool)
finish outside the top four places for the first time since 1994–95.
In the following five seasons,
Manchester United and Liverpool both
found themselves outside of the top four three times while Chelsea
finished 10th in the 2015–16 season. Arsenal finished 5th in the
2016–17 season, ending their record of 20 consecutive top four
finishes.

Due to insistence by the International Federation of Association
Football (FIFA), the international governing body of football, that
domestic leagues reduce the number of games clubs played, the number
of clubs was reduced to 20 in 1995 when four teams were relegated from
the league and only two teams promoted. On 8 June 2006,
FIFAFIFA requested
that all major European leagues, including Italy's
Serie A and Spain's
La Liga be reduced to 18 teams by the start of the 2007–08 season.
The
Premier LeaguePremier League responded by announcing their intention to resist
such a reduction. Ultimately, the 2007–08 season kicked off again
with 20 teams.

The Football AssociationThe Football AssociationPremier LeaguePremier League Ltd (FAPL) is operated as
a corporation and is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is a
shareholder , with one vote each on issues such as rule changes and
contracts. The clubs elect a chairman, chief executive, and board of
directors to oversee the daily operations of the league. The current
chairman is Sir
Dave Richards , who was appointed in April 1999, and
the chief executive is
Richard Scudamore , appointed in November 1999.
The former chairman and chief executive, John Quinton and Peter
Leaver , were forced to resign in March 1999 after awarding
consultancy contracts to former Sky executives
Sam Chisholm and David
Chance.
The Football AssociationThe Football Association is not directly involved in the
day-to-day operations of the Premier League, but has veto power as a
special shareholder during the election of the chairman and chief
executive and when new rules are adopted by the league.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League sends representatives to UEFA's European Club
Association , the number of clubs and the clubs themselves chosen
according to
UEFAUEFA coefficients . For the 2012–13 season the Premier
League has 10 representatives in the Association: Arsenal, Aston
Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City,
Manchester United, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur. The
European Club Association is responsible for electing three members to
UEFA's Club Competitions Committee, which is involved in the
operations of
UEFAUEFA competitions such as the Champions League and UEFA
Europa League .

COMPETITION FORMAT

COMPETITION

There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a
season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double
round-robin system ), once at their home stadium and once at that of
their opponents', for a total of 38 games. Teams receive three points
for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss.
Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference , and then
goals scored. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same
position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or
for qualification to other competitions, a play-off match at a neutral
venue decides rank. The three lowest placed teams are relegated into
the
EFL ChampionshipEFL Championship , and the top two teams from the Championship,
together with the winner of play-offs involving the third to sixth
placed Championship clubs, are promoted in their place.

As of the 2009–10 season qualification for the
UEFAUEFA Champions
League changed, the top four teams in the
Premier LeaguePremier League qualify for
the
UEFAUEFA Champions League , with the top three teams directly entering
the group stage. Previously only the top two teams qualified
automatically. The fourth-placed team enters the Champions League at
the play-off round for non-champions and must win a two-legged
knockout tie in order to enter the group stage.

The team placed fifth in the
Premier LeaguePremier League automatically qualifies
for the
UEFAUEFA Europa League , and the sixth and seventh-placed teams
can also qualify, depending on the winners of the two domestic cup
competitions i.e. the
FA CupFA Cup and the Capital One Cup (League Cup) .
Two Europa League places are reserved for the winners of each
tournament; if the winner of either the
FA CupFA Cup or League Cup qualifies
for the Champions League, then that place will go to the next-best
placed finisher in the Premier League.

An exception to the usual European qualification system happened in
2005, after Liverpool won the Champions League the year before, but
did not finish in a Champions League qualification place in the
Premier LeaguePremier League that season.
UEFAUEFA gave special dispensation for
Liverpool to enter the Champions League, giving
EnglandEngland five
qualifiers.
UEFAUEFA subsequently ruled that the defending champions
qualify for the competition the following year regardless of their
domestic league placing. However, for those leagues with four entrants
in the Champions League, this meant that if the Champions League
winner finished outside the top four in its domestic league, it would
qualify at the expense of the fourth-placed team in the league. At
that time, no association could have more than four entrants in the
Champions League. This occurred in 2012, when Chelsea – who had won
the Champions League the previous year, but finished sixth in the
league – qualified for the Champions League in place of Tottenham
Hotspur, who went into the Europa League.

Starting with the 2015–16 season, the Europa League champion
automatically qualifies for the following season's Champions League,
and the maximum number of Champions League places for any single
association has increased to five. An association with four Champions
League places, such as The FA, will only earn a fifth place if a club
from that association that does not qualify for the Champions League
through its league wins either the Champions League or Europa League.

In 2007, the
Premier LeaguePremier League became the highest ranking European
League based on the performances of English teams in European
competitions over a five-year period. This broke the eight-year
dominance of the Spanish league,
La Liga .

Between the 1992–93 and the 2015–16 seasons,
Premier LeaguePremier League clubs
won the
UEFAUEFA Champions League four times (and had five runners-up),
behind Spain's
La Liga with nine wins, and Italy's
Serie A with five
wins; ahead of, among others, Germany's
BundesligaBundesliga with three wins
(see table here ). The
FIFAFIFA Club World Cup (originally called the FIFA
Club World Championship) has been won once by a
Premier LeaguePremier League club
(
Manchester United in 2008), with two runners-up (Liverpool 2005,
Chelsea 2012), behind Brazil's Brasileirão and Spain's La Liga
with four wins, and Italy's
Serie A with two wins (see table here
).

PROMOTION AND RELEGATION

A system of promotion and relegation exists between the Premier
League and the
Football League ChampionshipFootball League Championship . The three lowest placed
teams in
Premier LeaguePremier League are relegated to the Football League
Championship, and the top two teams from the Football League
Championship promoted to Premier League, with an additional team
promoted after a series of play-offs involving the third, fourth,
fifth and sixth placed clubs. The
Premier LeaguePremier League had 22 teams when it
began in 1992, but this was reduced to the present 20-team format in
1995.

A total of 47 clubs have played in the
Premier LeaguePremier League from its
inception in 1992, up to and including the 2016–17 season. Brighton
">

* Hull City , Middlesbrough , and Sunderland were relegated to the
Championship for the 2017–18 season, while Newcastle United ,
Brighton and Hove Albion and Huddersfield Town , as winners,
runners-up and play-off final winners respectively, were promoted from
the 2016–17 Championship season .
* AFC Bournemouth , Stoke City , and Swansea City are the only clubs
to have remained in the
Premier LeaguePremier League since their first promotion,
having played 3, 9 and 6 seasons (out of 26) respectively. Brighton
and Hove Albion and Huddersfield Town will make their Premier League
debuts in 2017–18 season.

a: Founding member of the Premier League
b: Never been relegated from Premier League
c: One of the original 12 Football League teams
d: Club based in
WalesWales AFC Bournemouth Southampton
LondonLondon Brighton top:55.52%;left:54.201%"> West Bromwich Albion
Stoke City Manchester City
Manchester United
Liverpool Everton Huddersfield Town Newcastle United
Leicester City Swansea City Watford Burnley
LONDON TEAMS
Arsenal
Chelsea
Crystal Palace
Tottenham Hotspur
West Ham United Location of clubs for the 2017–18 Premier
League season ARSENAL CHELSEA CRYSTAL PALACE
Tottenham
Hotspur WEST HAM UNITED Greater
LondonLondon Premier League
football clubs

NON-ENGLISH CLUBS

See also: List of association football clubs playing in the league of
another country
WalesWales

In 2011, a Welsh club participated in the
Premier LeaguePremier League for the
first time after Swansea City gained promotion. The first Premier
League match to be played outside
EnglandEngland was Swansea City's home
match at the Liberty
StadiumStadium against Wigan Athletic on 20 August 2011.
In 2012–13, Swansea qualified for the Europa League by winning the
League Cup . The number of Welsh clubs in the Premier League
increased to two for the first time in 2013–14, as Cardiff City
gained promotion, but Cardiff City was relegated after its maiden
season.

Because they are members of the Football Association of
WalesWales (FAW),
the question of whether clubs like Swansea should represent
EnglandEngland or
WalesWales in European competitions has caused long-running discussions in
UEFAUEFA . Swansea took one of England's three available places in the
Europa League in 2013–14 by winning the League Cup in 2012–13. The
right of Welsh clubs to take up such English places was in doubt until
UEFAUEFA clarified the matter in March 2012.
ScotlandScotland and Ireland

Participation in the
Premier LeaguePremier League by some Scottish or Irish clubs
has sometimes been discussed, but without result. The idea came
closest to reality in 1998, when Wimbledon received Premier League
approval to relocate to Dublin, Ireland , but the move was blocked by
the
Football Association of Ireland . Additionally, the media
occasionally discusses the idea that Scotland's two biggest teams,
Celtic and Rangers , should or will take part in the Premier League,
but nothing has come of these discussions.

Barclays' deal with the
Premier LeaguePremier League expired at the end of the
2015–16 season. The FA announced on 4 June 2015 that it would not
pursue any further title sponsorship deals for the Premier League,
arguing that they wanted to build a "clean" brand for the competition
more in line with those of major U.S. sports leagues .

As well as sponsorship for the league itself, the
Premier LeaguePremier League has
a number of official partners and suppliers. The official ball
supplier for the league is Nike who have had the contract since the
2000–01 season when they took over from Mitre .

The
Premier LeaguePremier League has the highest revenue of any football league in
the world, with total club revenues of €2.48 billion in 2009–10.
In 2013–14, due to improved television revenues and cost controls,
the
Premier LeaguePremier League had net profits in excess of £78 million,
exceeding all other football leagues. In 2010 the
Premier LeaguePremier League was
awarded the Queen\'s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade
category for its outstanding contribution to international trade and
the value it brings to English football and the United Kingdom's
broadcasting industry.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League includes some of the richest football clubs in the
world. Deloitte's "Football Money League " listed seven Premier League
clubs in the top 20 for the 2009–10 season, and all 20 clubs were
in the top 40 globally by the end of the 2013–14 season, largely as
a result of increased broadcasting revenue. From 2013, the league
generates €2.2 billion per year in domestic and international
television rights.

Premier LeaguePremier League clubs agreed in principle in December 2012, to radical
new cost controls. The two proposals consist of a break-even rule and
a cap on the amount clubs can increase their wage bill by each season.
With the new television deals on the horizon, momentum has been
growing to find ways of preventing the majority of the cash going
straight to players and agents.

Central payments for the 2016-17 season amounted to £2,398,515,773
across the 20 clubs, with each team receiving a flat participation fee
of £35,301,989 and additional payments for TV broadcasts (£1,016,690
for general UK rights to match highlights, £1,136,083 for each live
UK broadcast of their games and £39,090,596 for all overseas rights),
commercial rights (a flat fee of £4,759,404) and a notional measure
of "merit" which was based upon final league position.

The merit component was a nominal sum of £1,941,609 multiplied by
each finishing place, counted from the foot of the table (e.g.,
Burnley finished 16th in May 2017, 5 places counting upwards, and
received 5 x £1,941,609 = £9,708,045 merit payment).

Matches broadcast in the United Kingdom and Ireland
SEASONS
SKY
SETANTA
ESPN
BT
TOTAL

1992–1997
60
–
–
–
60

1997–2001
60
–
–
–
60

2001–2004
110
–
–
–
110

2004–2007
138
–
–
–
138

2007–2009
96
42
–
–
138

2009–2013
115
–
23
–
138

2013–2016
116
–
–
38
154

2016–2019
126
–
–
42
168

A 2012 match between Chelsea and Norwich City .

Television has played a major role in the history of the Premier
League. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to BSkyB
in 1992 was at the time a radical decision, but one that has paid off.
At the time pay television was an almost untested proposition in the
UK market, as was charging fans to watch live televised football.
However, a combination of Sky's strategy, the quality of Premier
League football and the public's appetite for the game has seen the
value of the Premier League's TV rights soar.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League sells its television rights on a collective basis.
This is in contrast to some other European Leagues, including La Liga,
in which each club sells its rights individually, leading to a much
higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The
money is divided into three parts: half is divided equally between
the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final
league position, the top club getting twenty times as much as the
bottom club, and equal steps all the way down the table; the final
quarter is paid out as facilities fees for games that are shown on
television, with the top clubs generally receiving the largest shares
of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between
the twenty clubs.

The first Sky television rights agreement was worth £304 million
over five seasons. The next contract, negotiated to start from the
1997–98 season, rose to £670 million over four seasons. The third
contract was a £1.024 billion deal with
BSkyB for the three seasons
from 2001–02 to 2003–04. The league brought in £320 million from
the sale of its international rights for the three-year period from
2004–05 to 2006–07. It sold the rights itself on a
territory-by-territory basis. Sky's monopoly was broken from August
2006 when
Setanta Sports was awarded rights to show two out of the six
packages of matches available. This occurred following an insistence
by the
European CommissionEuropean Commission that exclusive rights should not be sold to
one television company. Sky and Setanta paid a total of £1.7 billion,
a two-thirds increase which took many commentators by surprise as it
had been widely assumed that the value of the rights had levelled off
following many years of rapid growth. Setanta also hold rights to a
live 3 pm match solely for Irish viewers. The
BBCBBC has retained the
rights to show highlights for the same three seasons (on Match of the
Day ) for £171.6 million, a 63 per cent increase on the £105 million
it paid for the previous three-year period. Sky and BT have agreed to
jointly pay £84.3 million for delayed television rights to 242 games
(that is the right to broadcast them in full on television and over
the internet) in most cases for a period of 50 hours after 10 pm on
matchday. Overseas television rights fetched £625 million, nearly
double the previous contract. The total raised from these deals is
more than £2.7 billion, giving
Premier LeaguePremier League clubs an average media
income from league games of around £40 million-a-year from 2007 to
2010.
Cristiano RonaldoCristiano Ronaldo preparing to take a free kick in a 2009
match between
Manchester United and Liverpool .

The TV rights agreement between the
Premier LeaguePremier League and Sky has faced
accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases have arisen
as a result. An investigation by the
Office of Fair Trading in 2002
found
BSkyB to be dominant within the pay TV sports market, but
concluded that there were insufficient grounds for the claim that
BSkyB had abused its dominant position. In July 1999 the Premier
League's method of selling rights collectively for all member clubs
was investigated by the UK Restrictive Practices Court, who concluded
that the agreement was not contrary to the public interest.

The BBC's highlights package on Saturday and Sunday nights, as well
as other evenings when fixtures justify, will run until 2016.
Television rights alone for the period 2010 to 2013 have been
purchased for £1.782 billion. On 22 June 2009, due to troubles
encountered by
Setanta Sports after it failed to meet a final deadline
over a £30 million payment to the Premier League,
ESPNESPN was awarded
two packages of UK rights containing a total of 46 matches that were
available for the 2009–10 season as well as a package of 23 matches
per season from 2010–11 to 2012–13. On 13 June 2012, the Premier
League announced that BT had been awarded 38 games a season for the
2013–14 through 2015–16 seasons at £246 million-a-year. The
remaining 116 games were retained by Sky who paid £760
million-a-year. The total domestic rights have raised £3.018 billion,
an increase of 70.2% over the 2010–11 to 2012–13 rights. The
value of the licensing deal rose by another 70.2% in 2015, when Sky
and BT paid a total of £5.136 billion to renew their contracts with
the
Premier LeaguePremier League for another three years up to the 2018–19 season.

Between the 1998–99 season and the 2012–13 season, RTÉ broadcast
highlights on
Premier Soccer Saturday and occasionally Premier Soccer
Sunday. During then between the 2004–05 season and the 2006–07
season, RTÉ broadcast 15 live matches on a Saturday afternoon with
each match being called Premiership Live.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League is the most-watched football league in the world,
broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV
audience of 4.7 billion people, often on networks owned and/or
controlled by
21st Century Fox (which owns about 39% of
BSkyB in the
UK). The Premier League's production arm,
Premier LeaguePremier League Productions,
is operated by IMG Productions and produces all content for its
international television partners.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League is particularly popular in Asia, where it is the
most widely distributed sports programme. In Australia, Optus
telecommunications holds exclusive rights to the Premier League,
providing live broadcasts and online access (
Fox Sports formerly held
rights). In India, the matches are broadcast live on
STAR Sports . In
China, the broadcast rights were awarded to Super Sports in a six-year
agreement that began in the 2013–14 season. As of the 2013–14
season, Canadian broadcast rights to the
Premier LeaguePremier League are jointly
owned by
SportsnetSportsnet and TSN , with both rival networks holding rights
to 190 matches per season.

There has been an increasing gulf between the
Premier LeaguePremier League and the
Football League. Since its split with the Football League , many
established clubs in the
Premier LeaguePremier League have managed to distance
themselves from their counterparts in lower leagues. Owing in large
part to the disparity in revenue from television rights between the
leagues, many newly promoted teams have found it difficult to avoid
relegation in their first season in the Premier League. In every
season except 2001–02 and 2011–12, at least one Premier League
newcomer has been relegated back to the Football League. In 1997–98
all three promoted clubs were relegated at the end of the season.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League distributes a portion of its television revenue to
clubs that are relegated from the league in the form of "parachute
payments". Starting with the 2013–14 season, these payments are in
excess of £60 million over four seasons. Though designed to help
teams adjust to the loss of television revenues (the average Premier
League team receives £55 million while the average Football League
Championship club receives £2 million), critics maintain that the
payments actually widen the gap between teams that have reached the
Premier LeaguePremier League and those that have not, leading to the common
occurrence of teams "bouncing back " soon after their relegation. For
some clubs who have failed to win immediate promotion back to the
Premier League, financial problems, including in some cases
administration or even liquidation have followed. Further relegations
down the footballing ladder have ensued for several clubs unable to
cope with the gap.

This section needs to be UPDATED. Please update this article to
reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2015)

As of the 2016–17 season,
Premier LeaguePremier League football has been played
in 55 stadiums since the formation of the division in 1992. The
Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the subsequent
Taylor Report saw a
recommendation that standing terraces should be abolished; as a result
all stadiums in the
Premier LeaguePremier League are all-seater . Since the
formation of the Premier League, football grounds in
EnglandEngland have seen
constant improvements to capacity and facilities, with some clubs
moving to new-build stadiums. Nine stadiums that have seen Premier
League football have now been demolished. The stadiums for the
2010–11 season show a large disparity in capacity:
Old TraffordOld Trafford ,
the home of
Manchester United has a capacity of 75,957 with
Bloomfield Road , the home of Blackpool , having a capacity of 16,220.
The combined total capacity of the
Premier LeaguePremier League in the 2010–11
season is 770,477 with an average capacity of 38,523.

StadiumStadium attendances are a significant source of regular income for
Premier LeaguePremier League clubs. For the 2009–10 season, average attendances
across the league clubs were 34,215 for
Premier LeaguePremier League matches with a
total aggregate attendance figure of 13,001,616. This represents an
increase of 13,089 from the average attendance of 21,126 recorded in
the league's first season (1992–93). However, during the 1992–93
season the capacities of most stadiums were reduced as clubs replaced
terraces with seats in order to meet the
Taylor Report 's 1994–95
deadline for all-seater stadiums . The Premier League's record
average attendance of 36,144 was set during the 2007–08 season.
This record was then beaten in the 2013–14 season recording an
average attendance of 36,695 with a total attendance of just under 14
million, the highest average in England's top flight since 1950.

Managers in the
Premier LeaguePremier League are involved in the day-to-day running
of the team, including the training, team selection, and player
acquisition. Their influence varies from club-to-club and is related
to the ownership of the club and the relationship of the manager with
fans. Managers are required to have a
UEFAUEFA Pro Licence which is the
final coaching qualification available, and follows the completion of
the
UEFAUEFA 'B' and 'A' Licences. The
UEFAUEFA Pro Licence is required by
every person who wishes to manage a club in the
Premier LeaguePremier League on a
permanent basis (i.e. more than 12 weeks – the amount of time an
unqualified caretaker manager is allowed to take control). Caretaker
appointments are managers that fill the gap between a managerial
departure and a new appointment. Several caretaker managers have gone
on to secure a permanent managerial post after performing well as a
caretaker; examples include
Paul Hart at Portsmouth and
David Pleat at
Tottenham Hotspur .

At the inception of the
Premier LeaguePremier League in 1992–93 , just eleven
players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches
hailed from outside of the United Kingdom or Ireland. By 2000–01 ,
the number of foreign players participating in the
Premier LeaguePremier League was
36 per cent of the total. In the 2004–05 season the figure had
increased to 45 per cent. On 26 December 1999, Chelsea became the
first
Premier LeaguePremier League side to field an entirely foreign starting
line-up, and on 14 February 2005 Arsenal were the first to name a
completely foreign 16-man squad for a match. By 2009, under 40% of
the players in the
Premier LeaguePremier League were English.

In response to concerns that clubs were increasingly passing over
young English players in favour of foreign players, in 1999, the Home
Office tightened its rules for granting work permits to players from
countries outside of the
European UnionEuropean Union . A non-EU player applying
for the permit must have played for his country in at least 75 per
cent of its competitive 'A' team matches for which he was available
for selection during the previous two years, and his country must have
averaged at least 70th place in the official
FIFAFIFA world rankings over
the previous two years. If a player does not meet those criteria, the
club wishing to sign him may appeal.

Players may only be transferred during transfer windows that are set
by the Football Association. The two transfer windows run from the
last day of the season to 31 August and from 31 December to 31
January. Player registrations cannot be exchanged outside these
windows except under specific licence from the FA, usually on an
emergency basis. As of the 2010–11 season , the Premier League
introduced new rules mandating that each club must register a maximum
25-man squad of players aged over 21, with the squad list only allowed
to be changed in transfer windows or in exceptional circumstances.
This was to enable the 'home grown' rule to be enacted, whereby the
League would also from 2010 require at least 8 of the named 25 man
squad to be made up of 'home-grown players'.

There is no team or individual salary cap in the Premier League. As a
result of the increasingly lucrative television deals, player wages
rose sharply following the formation of the
Premier LeaguePremier League when the
average player wage was £75,000 per year. The average salary stands
at £1.1 million as of the 2008–09 season. As of 2015, average
salaries in the
Premier LeaguePremier League are higher than for any other football
league in the world.

The record transfer fee for a
Premier LeaguePremier League player has risen
steadily over the lifetime of the competition. Prior to the start of
the first
Premier LeaguePremier League season
Alan Shearer became the first British
player to command a transfer fee of more than £3 million. The record
rose steadily in the Premier League's first few seasons, until Alan
Shearer made a record breaking £15 million move to Newcastle United
in 1996. All three of the most expensive transfers in the history of
the league highest transfer in the sport\'s history had a Premier
League club on the selling or buying end, with
Juventus selling Paul
Pogba to
Manchester United in August 2016 for a fee of £89 million,
Tottenham Hotspur selling
Gareth Bale to Real Madrid for £85 million
in 2013, Manchester United's sale of
Cristiano RonaldoCristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid
for £80 million in 2009, and Liverpool selling
Luis Suárez to
Barcelona for £75 million in 2014.

The
Premier LeaguePremier League maintains two trophies – the genuine trophy
(held by the reigning champions) and a spare replica. Two trophies are
held in the event that two different clubs could win the League on the
final day of the season. In the rare event that more than two clubs
are vying for the title on the final day of the season – then a
replica won by a previous club is used.

The current
Premier LeaguePremier League trophy was created by Royal Jewellers
Asprey of
LondonLondon . It consists of a trophy with a golden crown and a
malachite plinth base. The plinth weighs 33 pounds (15 kg) and the
trophy weighs 22 pounds (10.0 kg). The trophy and plinth are 76 cm
(30 in) tall, 43 cm (17 in) wide and 25 cm (9.8 in) deep.

Its main body is solid sterling silver and silver gilt , while its
plinth is made of malachite, a semi-precious stone. The plinth has a
silver band around its circumference, upon which the names of the
title-winning clubs are listed. Malachite's green colour is also
representative of the green field of play. The design of the trophy
is based on the heraldry of Three Lions that is associated with
English football. Two of the lions are found above the handles on
either side of the trophy – the third is symbolised by the captain
of the title-winning team as he raises the trophy, and its gold crown,
above his head at the end of the season. The ribbons that drape the
handles are presented in the team colours of the league champions that
year.

In 2004, a special gold version of the trophy was commissioned to
commemorate Arsenal winning the title without a single defeat .

PLAYER AND MANAGER AWARDS

In addition to the winner's trophy and the individual winner\'s
medals awarded to players, the
Premier LeaguePremier League also awards the monthly
Manager of the Month and Player of the Month awards, as well as
annual awards for Manager of the Season , Player of the Season ,
Golden Boot and the Golden Glove awards.